


Heat Wave

by sweetestpiglet



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M, mentions of wax play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:40:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestpiglet/pseuds/sweetestpiglet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This is an emergency!” shouted a brunette, pushing the infirmary doors open dramatically and holding one open for- holy shit, Hawkeye?</p>
<p>“Fuck, Darcy, keep it down,” he growled...  “We don’t need to spread this around.”</p>
<p>Rachel stood, shakily.  “I’m the on-call nurse,” she said, pulling on gloves.  “What seems to be the problem?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heat Wave

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for Darcy Lewis Smut Week, #1: Melting

Rachel had only been working for SHIELD a few weeks. She had a reputation for keeping her mouth shut about the patients she treated at the private hospital in midtown, they said, and would pay double her current salary to be the on-call nurse, nights, Thursdays through Sundays.

How do you get a reputation by not doing something, she wanted to know- but double salary meant almost triple the amount that could go into the twins’ college fund, so questions could be let go.

She expected to treat a lot of broken bones, burns, and internal bleeding, but there hadn’t been any attacks on the city lately, so there wasn’t much excitement in that respect.

Not to say that the infirmary wasn’t busy. There was a cold going around, so she signed a lot of forms for sick leave. Some new recruits couldn’t handle their issued service weapons, and came in with bruises needing ointment. A surprisingly large number of agents came in after their shifts for tests, and then she had to be the one to sit them down with the results, handing them antibiotics and suggesting that they contact their recent sexual partners with the information.

That had been kind of fun. She hadn’t figured out who Agent 0 was yet.

None of the Avengers had come in, though. Rachel had been told in her orientation that they lived at the Tower, and she was the first line of medical treatment for them. But as of her third Saturday night shift, she had seen neither hide nor hair of the heroes.

Until around 2am.

“This is an emergency!” shouted a brunette, pushing the infirmary doors open dramatically and holding one open for- holy shit, Hawkeye?

“Fuck, Darcy, keep it down,” he growled, holding a towel to his abdomen. “We don’t need to spread this around.”

Rachel stood, shakily. “I’m the on-call nurse,” she said, pulling on gloves. “What seems to be the problem?”

“Well, you see,” Darcy began, “Clint decided that, what with sleeping with the same person exclusively for the first time in, like, ever, he wanted to try different things in the bedroom, and I agreed to try out a few things for him, in exchange for him trying a few things I wanted. So last night was his turn, and I let him—”

Hawkeye- Clint?- cut her off. “She means, what happened tonight,” he said shortly, jaw clenched.

“Oh. He burned himself. On wax.”

Rachel’s eyebrows rose.

“I did not burn myself. I was burned. I was not the one applying the wax.”

“No, you weren’t, but you were the one who bumped into my face while I was pouring it and startled me into dropping the candle, so it was technically your fault.”

“How could I have bumped you?” Clint demanded. “My hands were tied to the bedposts!”

Rachel’s jaw dropped as she followed the action.

“Okay, yes, your hands were tied- but they’re not the only part of you that can move,” Darcy argued.

“SO, wax burn?” Rachel broke in- because as much as she wanted to hear the story, she couldn’t justify delaying treatment. “Let’s take a look.”

Clint sat down on the examination table and slowly peeled the towel away from his abdomen- oh, yup, that looks consistent with a wax burn.

“Please walk me through the steps you took immediately following the, uh, dropping of the candle,” she said, walking to her Level 2 cabinet (a little more intense than “Band-Aids and Boo-Boos” and not quite “Tourniquets and Tonsillectomy”) for bandages, aloe vera, and honey. Some of the Avengers were apparently move likely to accept medical care if there were “alternative treatments” available- she didn’t know if Clint was one of them, but he did let his girlfriend pour wax on him, so maybe he wasn’t devoted to pharmaceuticals, either.

“As soon as I dropped the candle and he screamed, I untied the celebratory rope,” Darcy said. “Then Clint ran to the bathroom and, er…” she trailed off, looking at the pained Avenger.

“I jumped stomach-first into the bubble bath that I had pulled Darcy from earlier,” Clint finished. “It was cold by then, and I made Darcy keep track of how long I was in there.”

“After twenty minutes, he got out of the tub, we peeled the wax from him, I soaked that towel in cold water, and we made our way here. I kept a few of the bigger pieces of wax,” she confided. “I mean, I know it hurt him and all- but now I’ve got physical proof of his eight-pack that he might actually agree to let me auction off for charity, you know?”

Rachel considered that as she turned back to the couple. “That could probably be great for charity,” she said, setting the items onto the table next to Clint and opening the aloe vera. “What price would you want for it?”

“Probably a grand, to start with,” Darcy responded, ignoring the slight hiss of pain from Clint as Rachel applied the gel. “Do you think we could have a whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-thing if I could get all the Avengers to do casts of their abs?”

“Odin’s beard, Darce,” Clint swore. “You can’t just go around asking my co-workers if you can pour wax on their stomachs for charity.”

Darcy rolled her eyes as Rachel applied honey to the bandages. “I’m just being hypothetical, okay? Like, could we raise more money for charity if there were more abs? Or would a lot decrease the amount of money- like, say someone wanted Steve’s abs ten-grand’s worth, but the rest of the team was only worth, say, five grand to him, but each of the other Avengers also had someone who wanted them ten-grand’s worth.”

Rachel nodded as she pressed the bandages onto Clint’s abdomen and reached for the roll of gauze to wrap around him. “Sit up, please. That’s a very good point, Darcy. You don’t know if anyone will think to form a coalition to bid, so it might be easier to auction them separately, and anyone who wants them all desperately enough will find the cash for them?”

“Do you really think people would bid on pieces of wax that have indentations of our abs on them?” Clint asked skeptically, watching as she tied off the gauze and wrapped the end under another strip. “I mean, seriously. It’s just wax.”

Rachel and Darcy both looked at him like he had two curved horns coming out of his forehead. “Dude,” Darcy said. “I’ve shown you the internet. You know that people have unhealthly levels of adoration for you guys.”

“My daughters would give a year’s allowance to be able to touch Captain America’s ass,” Rachel added as she handed the jars of aloe vera & honey and a fresh box of bandages to bemused Clint. “Every eight hours, cleanse the burn area with cool water, apply more aloe, and put on a bandage laced with honey. Try to avoid exposing the area to sunlight or heat for three weeks. Do you two need anything before you go- condoms, dental dams, maybe a pamphlet on safe BDSM practices or how to talk to your sexual partners about STIs?”

They took the BDSM pamphlet and left the infirmary- Clint requested it while Darcy blushed redder than her boyfriend’s burn. Rachel would have given more consideration to whether the brunette’s brashness was an act, and if so, for what, but the doors had just finished closing behind them when she was notified that a second Avenger required her attention.

“Nurse Bennett,” the nice English-accented computer said, “Please locate the emergency pack you were given at your orientation and proceed to level 24. Mr. Stark has been injured, and he is currently on the floor of the workshop, curled into what is known as ‘the fetal position.’”

“Do I need to grab anything from the Level 3 or 4 cabinets?” she asked, frantically grabbing the pack JARVIS referenced.

“No,” it- he?- responded. “There will be very little, if any, blood, and I have been assured that Mr. Stark’s splinter is from an Earthly variety of wood.”


End file.
